Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Tubby the Tuba (1975)

Based on source material
held in some esteem (more on that later), Tubby
the Tuba is among the lesser animated features released during the ’70s, so
even though the story is a harmless morality tale extolling worthy virtues, the
experience of watching the picture is quite tedious. Dick Van Dyke provides the
voice for the title character, an overweight brass instrument depressed that
all he does is provide repetitive “oompah-oompah” rhythms. One day, he breaks
from his orchestra in search of a melody to play. Yet Tubby gets sidetracked
when he takes a job at a circus, delivering pails of water to thirsty
elephants. One of the pachyderms, Mrs. Elephant (Pearl Bailey), asks for a
demonstration of Tubby’s musical skills and rejoices in what she hears. (“That
oompah turns me on!”) This leads to Tubby becoming a star attraction at the
circus, which in turn causes Tubby to become an insufferable diva. Will our
hero regain his humility? Will he find a melody to play? As Tubby the Tuba follows the blandest
possible children’s-entertainment patterns, the answers to these questions should
be painfully obvious. Tubby’s story originated as a narrated classical-music
piece in the 1940s, and it was first animated, via stop-motion, for an
Oscar-nominated 1947 short film. The expansion of the piece to feature length
did not serve poor Tubby well. Even with Van Dyke valiantly striving to inject
his characterization with pathos, the narrative is enervated and predictable
and stupid, with the material added to flesh out the running time coming across
as pure filler. By the time Tubby meets an underappreciated singing frog, the
filmmakers seem absolutely desperate to compensate for the limitations of their
one-dimensional leading character. Putting this sort of thing over requires
magic, but Tubby the Tuba is never
more than mundane. One might even say it’s oompathetic.